Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09054 The house church movement has gained significant attention in recent decades, particularly among believers who are disillusioned with institutional Christianity, frustrated by what they see as consumer-driven mega-church culture, or convinced that the early church model of meeting in homes is the pattern all Christians should follow. The movement raises legitimate questions about…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09052 Church membership is unfashionable in an age that prizes individual autonomy and resists anything that feels like institutional commitment. Many believers attend a church regularly without ever formally committing to it, treating the congregation as a service provider rather than a covenant community. But the New Testament does not describe the Christian life…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09033 The question of whether online church can replace physical attendance gained urgency during the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of Christians worldwide were unable to gather in person. What began as an emergency measure has, for some, become a preference. The convenience of watching a service from home, the ability to access gifted preachers…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09097 Christians have practised communion weekly, monthly, quarterly, and at virtually every other interval imaginable. Some traditions insist on daily observance; others celebrate it only a handful of times per year. The strength of feeling on this question is often inversely proportional to the amount of New Testament evidence available, which is surprisingly thin…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09095 The question of how large or small a church should be generates strong opinions on every side. Megachurch advocates point to growth as evidence of God’s blessing. House-church advocates insist that anything beyond a living room has lost the New Testament pattern. Both claims deserve to be tested against what Scripture actually says,…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 09012 The claim that there are apostles in the church today is made with increasing confidence by leaders within the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and related charismatic movements. Some go so far as to insist that the church cannot function properly without a restored apostolic office carrying governmental authority over other churches and leaders….
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 09094 The phrase “breaking bread” appears at several key points in the New Testament, and its interpretation has significant implications for how churches understand and practise the Lord’s Supper. Was the early church observing a brief, formal ordinance of bread and wine, or were they sharing a full communal meal in which the bread…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09009 The distinction between open and closed communion is one that many churchgoers encounter without fully understanding. It determines who is welcome at the Lord’s Table when a church celebrates the Supper, and the answer a church gives reveals something about how it understands the nature of the church, the ordinances, and the boundaries…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 09089 Church discipline is one of the most misunderstood and most neglected aspects of New Testament church life. For some, the very phrase conjures images of harsh judgementalism, public shaming, and spiritual abuse. For others, it has become so unfamiliar that the idea of a church confronting a member’s sin seems incompatible with the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 09008 The New Testament commands the church to observe the Lord’s Supper but does not specify how frequently. This has led to considerable variation across Christian traditions, from daily celebration in some Catholic and Orthodox settings to quarterly or even annual observance in some Protestant churches. The absence of a specific command about frequency…